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Helen Reddy To Perform Favorites In Alma

Helen Reddy To Perform Favorites In Alma

PHOTO COURTESY OF WWW.HELENREDDY.COM Grammy Award winning singer, actress, author and activist Helen Reddy will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Alma Performing Arts Center, 103 E. Main St. in Alma. Reddy is known for the songs “I Am Woman,” “Delta Dawn,” “Angie Baby,” “You and Me Against the World” and others.

In Concert

Helen Reddy

presented by the Alma Education and Arts Foundation

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Alma Performing Arts Center, 103 E. Main St. in Alma

Tickets: $25 to $40; call (479) 632-2129 or visit www.almapac.org. Admission also is by season ticket.

The voice behind the global smash “I Am Woman” and a star of the “Pete’s Dragon” movie is set to arrive on an Alma stage.

Hailed by fans as the “Queen of ’70s Pop,” Helen Reddy will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Alma Performing Arts Center, 103 E. Main St. in Alma. The Grammy Award winner, actress, author and activist said she will sing from a set list that spans her spotlight-covered career.

“The concert will pretty much be a mix — a lot of songs people are familiar with and some songs they’re not familiar with, but it will be a good show,” Reddy said during a recent telephone interview. “I have a fabulous band with me, and it’s a well-paced show.”

Known for the Top 40 hit singles “Delta Dawn,” “You and Me Against the World,” “Angie Baby” and “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady,” Reddy was the first Australian to win a Grammy Award and have three No. 1 singles in the same year, in 1973. She also was the first artist to win the American Music Award for Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist in 1974, and in 1978, she surprised many fans by singing backup on Kiss singer-bassist Gene Simmons’ solo song, “True Confessions.”

“It was a very exciting time for me; it was almost too exciting,” said Reddy, who was named the 28th Best Adult Contemporary Artist of All Time by Billboard Magazine in 2011. “I wish I could have spaced out the success and excitement a little bit more, but it was a wonderful experience. I’ve been able to do films, TV shows and music. I’ve been able to do what I really wanted to do.”

Growing up in an entertainment family, Reddy was on stage for the first time at age 4. The lifelong fan of Peggy Lee and Paul Williams said she joyously took part in her father’s comedy routines.

“I was 4 then, but I looked only 2 years old, because I was so small for my age,” Reddy said. “My father would be doing his bit, and I would come up out of the audience. He would say to me, ‘Young lady, you have never seen me before, right?’ And I would say, ‘Yes, father, I don’t know who you are.’”

Reddy laughed.

“Oh, when you get that first laugh, it is something else,” she said.

Reddy has appeared in countless TV shows, such as “The Carol Burnett Show,” “The Muppet Show” and “The Bobby Darin Show,” and she has performed in numerous Broadway and West End productions over the years. In 1977, she starred opposite Mickey Rooney, Sean Marshall, Jim Dale, Shelly Winters and Red Buttons in “Pete’s Dragon,” a part live-action, part animated movie that gave Reddy a rewarding, inspirational experience.

“Studios, at that point, had stopped making films like ‘Pete’s Dragon’ for children, and that was because Walt Disney had passed away earlier,” Reddy said. “People said, ‘What would Walt want us to do with this movie?’ So we made ‘Pete’s Dragon,’ and it was a great, interesting time.”

Reddy also holds her place as an activist close to her heart. Her song, “I Am Woman,” seemingly was heard by everyone on radio in the early 1970s. Written by Reddy and fellow singer-songwriter Ray Burton, the song became an anthem for the time period that was called Second-Wave Feminism, which began in the 1960s, and in 2009, “I Am Woman” was added to the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia Registry.

“I didn’t have any idea that the song would have such an impact when we recorded it,” Reddy said. “I think if I had known that, I would have collapsed in the studio.

“I wasn’t really ready for it, to be honest,” she added of her success in the 1970s. “But things happen for the right reason, and ‘I Am Woman’ was a song that half the country needed to hear at the time.”